MASSACHUSETTS NURSE NEWSLETTER :: September 2007

Taunton school nurses win fight to keep an RN in every school

By Barbara “Cookie” Cooke

The Taunton School Nurses won a great victory last month, as they made their case before the Taunton School Committee to prevent a planned layoff of two nurses—a move that would have left some schools in the system without full-time nursing coverage. What follows is a brief summary of how the nurses organized internally to prevent the layoffs and, as result, protected the health of the city’s children.

End-of-school surprises

There are currently 18 school nurses represented by the MNA who serve 16 public schools and four parochial schools in the city of Taunton. The nurses take care of a total population of more than 9,700 students. At the end of the 2007 school year, two Taunton school nurses were informed that their positions were going to be cut. Julie Donabedian, a school nurse and co-chair of the nurses’ bargaining unit, stated, “This was appalling and we were not going to just let it happen.”

With the support of data that clearly showed the workload of the school nurses was on the rise, the nurses decided to bring their case directly to the Taunton School Committee to prevent the layoffs.

“In the wake of the growth in demand for school health services for our children in Taunton, and with an understanding of the potential consequences of the failure to maintain the established standard of at least one nurse for every school, nothing less than the status quo for school nurse staffing was acceptable,” said Donabedian. “We were determined to fight the proposed cuts.”

“These cuts would leave schools in the system without full-time nursing coverage,” Karen Tremblay, an elementary school nurse, told the school committee during her presentation. “What would happen if, while one of our nurses was off attending to students at one school, a student at another school was hit in the head with a baseball? Or a student with a cardiac condition developed a problem? That nurse couldn’t be in two places at once—a point that is particularly important given that six minutes without heart function can cause death. A ten minute drive from one school to another could mean the difference between life and death.”

Winning the fight

After compelling presentations from Tremblay and Donabedian, the school committee not only voted to reject the plan for a layoff, but voted to add a school nurse to ensure that there is indeed a nurse in every public school in Taunton. “It was like a perfect storm,” said Tremblay, “Everything seemed to line up and work to our benefit.”

“The support from my fellow nurses, parents and the staff at MNA to speak out was really unbelievable,” Donabedian added. “I was very stressed and anxious about speaking at a school committee meeting, but the MNA staff was extremely supportive and helped to ease my fears. They helped us to put together a great presentation and created statistical graphs that clearly showed how the layoffs would impact our patients, the kids of Taunton. The school committee got it and we ended up with the rehiring of the laid-off nurses and a full time nurse for each school. Thanks to the MNA, everyone won.”